I wish I could say that the world is always a fun, peaceful, positive place. Unfortunately, we all know it isn’t. As much as we’d like to live in a perfect world, the world as we know it is quite the flawed place. We get hurt, we hurt others, we suffer and we feel pain just as much as we play, grow, heal and celebrate. Life is about balance, it’s about flow—and it’s really about a journey. However, if we hold on to all the old pain and baggage we pick up along the way, we may become weighted down. It will become harder to move forward and accept the new gifts life has for us. So, what do we do? We learn to let go.

Learning to heal, let go of the pain we are holding deep within, and move forward is a pivotal part of life. It’s how we create room in our hearts for new people and experiences. I’m a nostalgic person. I love the past as much as anyone else, so this lesson has become crucial for me. Learning to let go of things that serve no positive purpose isn’t easy. It’s not a skill we acquire overnight. But with focus and the intention to release the past, we can start learning how to move forward one small step at a time.

If you first ask yourself to reveal what you’re holding on to, you may be able to figure out what you need to let go of. You may even surprise yourself.

Perhaps you don’t even know the extent to which you’re dragging past experiences (or their emotional energy) along with you. Maybe it’s time to conduct a meditation session with the Expand app and ask yourself, “What am I holding that no longer serves me?” An Expand exercise by Allyn Evans entitled “Release What No Longer Serves You” can help with this. If you first ask yourself to reveal what you’re holding on to, you may be able to figure out what you need to let go of. You may even surprise yourself. Many times in the past I’ve realized I’ve been holding things that I thought I let go of many years prior only to find out they were still with me. I just didn’t consciously notice.

Once you have revealed this to yourself, you can focus on meditating daily for a few minutes on the idea of healing and releasing things that are holding you back. That doesn’t mean forgetting. I’m a firm believer that we should remember almost all of our experiences, however painful, as learned lessons (within reason, of course). So, I tend to meditate on letting go of emotions that came with not great moments, dropping that emotional baggage, retaining the lesson it provided, and accepting healing from it. What I love most about meditation is that it’s almost always a unique journey. I’m constantly surprised with mine. Reflecting back on the things we keep carrying can be one of the most surprising and eye-opening moments of our self development. Accepting and healing ourselves from these things and moving forward freely can, undoubtedly, be one of life’s great rewards.